


What Do You Know About Love?

by purecamp



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Boarding School AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 16:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purecamp/pseuds/purecamp
Summary: Two boarding school students and best friends meet on the roof and talk. They have differing opinions, but something links them.Inspired by Frozen the Musical's What Do You Know About Love and the sequel, Kristoff Lullaby.
Relationships: Willam Belli/Sharon Needles
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	What Do You Know About Love?

By far, the best view of the sunset was from the school roof. From such a high vantage point, the huge expanse of forest that otherwise blanketed the surrounding hills could be seen in its entirety, the green turned golden in the dwindling light. Far off in the distance, there was the tiniest glimpse of a city, but the idyllic sounds of nature obscured any kind of suburban bustle they may have heard. The sky itself was a burnished orange, dappled with soft pink and deep purple, and the sun was perfectly level with the slanted roof upon which the two students sat.

Willam had taken her blazer off when the sun had begun to shine on them, and had placed it underneath her so that she was perched on the fabric rather than the slated roof tiles. Sharon still wore hers, the sleeves bunched and rolled up as always, the pins and patches glinting in the sunlight.

Making their way to the spot hadn’t been that difficult. The rooftop had once been public access to students, way back when the school was first built as an academy for young ladies, but due to safety reasons had been prohibited from entry over fifty years ago. Still, once they had made it up there, all they had to do was stack the assorted paraphernalia that had been left behind by students and staff past and climb up onto the actual roof turret. The incline was steady enough that they wouldn’t slip, and the flat section that covered an old jutting-out attic room had become their ideal seating area, just big enough for two.

Sharon was smoking a cigarette, which Willam didn’t really care for. She had some poppers tucked away in a pocket, but it didn’t seem like quite the right moment to bring them out. Poppers were for the nights when Willam and Sharon snuck out and got the bus into the city so that they could get into the nightclub. Sunsets like these were for sitting and watching and putting up with Sharon’s gross habit.

“Of all the ways you choose to rebel, you had to pick one that can kill you, didn’t you?” Willam asked her.

Sharon slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke. Unlike Willam, whose legs were dangling, she sat with her legs tucked into her chest, and her hand rested idly on her knee, the cigarette between her fingers. Willam watched it smouldering, always somewhat paranoid that it would burn her fingers.

“Why not? It calms me down.”

She tapped it gently, and the ash tumbled out of sight, hitting the ground far, far below.

Willam shook her head fondly. “You’re desecrating nature with your cigarette ash from above.”

Taking one last, long drag, Sharon eyed Willam for a moment before stubbing out the cigarette and setting it in the gutter a few feet below. “Is that better?”

“It’s a disgusting habit, Needles. You should know better.” Willam joked quietly. She herself had plenty of bad habits that Sharon could choose to pick up on, so she was allowed to constantly rib her about it. Their long-standing friendship ensured that.

Sharon shrugged. “Maybe when I meet the love of my life, I’ll quit.”

“Oh, god.” Willam rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you don’t believe in all that crap.”

In the gentle sunlight, Sharon didn’t look so pale or withered like she sometimes did in harsh daylight. Some people avoided her because of her reputation, or her general weirdness, but Willam knew that some steered clear because her unique look was disconcerting. She had oddly high cheekbones, huge dark eyes that were often shadowed and adorned with bags, a piercing gaze and lips often set in a straight, sharp line. 

Sometimes, Willam had thought to herself that Sharon looked a little like an alien. Not an ugly alien, necessarily; there was just something distinctly inhuman about her. She was pale and lithe, skinny but with long, shapely legs, and just tall enough to stick out among the rest of the students. Coupling that with her dark makeup and disallowed uniform modifications, she seemed to come from another planet.

She looked otherworldly in the sunset. Her skin painted gold, her eyes shimmering, her bony hands and slender arms graceful instead of ungainly. She seemed to shine a little bit, like a statue of bronze. The figure of a girl, smoking a cigarette on a boarding school roof, sharing a sunset and a beautiful view with a friend.

“What crap?” Sharon hugged her knees. Her blazer sleeves had always bothered Willam - they were rolled up but just that they rested awkwardly in the middle of her forearm, rather than at her elbow. It made her want to roll them down or all the way up, just to complete the look, but Sharon loathed perfection as far as Willam knew.

“The whole love at first sight, true love, soulmates bullshit.” Willam supplied. “All that fairytale nonsense.”

“You don’t believe in it?” Sharon’s tone was airy, surprised almost.

Willam scoffed. “You do?”

“I believe that love is the one thing that doesn’t have complications. Family love, friendship love, romantic love, they’re all the same thing carried out in different ways. I don’t think you can fall madly in love with someone at first sight, but I definitely think you can meet someone and know, in that moment, that you’re going to love them.”

Her expression was deadly serious. Willam stared at Sharon, watching her face for some sort of reaction, but she simply stared down at the forest surrounding them, her gaze focused on the serenity as though she hadn’t just spilled her heart.

“I had no idea you were such a romantic, Needles.” Willam commented.

Sharon laughed gently. “There’s a lot that you don’t know about me.”

“There’s a lot that you don’t know about love.” Willam countered her point. “How can you just know you’re gonna fall for someone?”

Raising an eyebrow, Sharon shifted slightly and moved her gaze up to Willam. Something in her face conveyed a mixture both amused and unimpressed. “What do you know about love?”

“What do you know about love?” Willam countered.

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her knee. “Some people just know love when it appears. I know I d- I know I will. There’s someone out there for everyone. Someone who will set you on fire and make your heart race and your palms sweat and your heart rate increase to two hundred beats per minute. They’re out there. Some people just know that.”

Willam shook her head. “Some people just read a lot of books.”

“I like books.” Sharon responded, slightly on the defense.

Backtracking, Willam hurried to avoid offending her. “That’s not the point. All I’m saying is, that kind of all-consuming, waves of fire type romance - it’s not real. None of that actually happens in real life.”

“And you would know that, would you?” Sharon challenged her.

“You have to work at love, you can’t just feel it.” Willam tried to explain as best as she could. “It takes dedication and time, it doesn’t happen straight away.”

Sharon, much to Willam’s chagrin, reached into her pocket and lit another cigarette. “It does. Think of when you’re drawn to someone, like a friend. You first meet them and you’re not best friends immediately, but something in you knows that you love them, and that’s why you become friends. It happens right away.”

Inadvertently, Willam thought back to when she had started at the boarding school. Not to be too cliche, but she knew it was a hotspot for two types of students - those with rich parents who wanted the absolute best for their precious darlings, and those with rich parents who wanted nothing more than to ship their little brats away for the majority of the year. Willam had known which category she fell into immediately, when her overly-doting mom had squeezed her in a teary goodbye and her dad had told her how he hoped she would succeed academically.

Already growing tired of their expectations, Willam had wanted to rebel even at the age of eleven and turned up to her first lesson, biology, five or so minutes late. The girls in her dormitory had reminded her of the time, but she pretended not to hear them and got ready slowly, relishing in her small act of rebellion.

There was only one free seat available. It was right at the front, arguably the most uncool place to sit, next to a weird girl with blonde hair in a messy plait and an ill-fitting uniform. She was overtly unpopular, and definitely fell into the category of, colloquially put, rich parents who didn’t give a fuck.

Willam sat next to her, offered a smile, and struck up a friendship. Then it was the two of them against the world.

“Next, you’re gonna tell me that love heals all, like it’s some kind of magic pill or something. Love will save the world and all that crap.” She added, covering up for how she had suddenly gotten lost in her early friendship with Sharon. Since then, they’d grown much closer, and Sharon had dyed her hair permanently black.

“Not quite. I find it strange that you don’t believe in any of it.” Sharon remarked. “It’s all that keeps me going sometimes… I dream about it. Just thinking that one day, me and…” She paused. “Me and the person I love the most, we could have a life together. Don’t you ever look around on nights like this and think that something like that can be possible? Being happy forever with a soulmate?”

The night did feel somewhat magical. It was getting late, but the long summer days made sure that the sun was still just barely sinking even when many people were settling down to sleep. All of the light made Willam feel even more vulnerable, in ways she didn’t understand. Sharon’s words made her deeply uncomfortable, rooting in her stomach, and she had no idea why she felt so weird as the conversation continued. Both of their voices had barely raised above a whisper, and their proximity ensured that they didn’t really have to go any louder. Neither one of them was angry and yet Willam felt like this was the most significant argument they had ever had, somehow.

Sharon sighed. “Never mind. What do you know about love?”

It was dismissive; a resignation. She was giving up.

“I just don’t understand your idea of love. It’s not realistic.” Willam said. “I don’t get it.”

Sharon’s hand trembled slightly as she lifted her second cigarette up to her lips. “Do you love someone?”

Dangerous territory. Inexplicably, Willam’s stomach lurched.

“In what way?”

“In any way.” Sharon answered, exasperated. “I told you, love is all the same. It’s just how you express it and how it makes you feel that makes it different. So, do you love anyone?”

Willam nodded.

“Right. So think about it… when someone hurts a loved one, you feel angry on their behalf because you care about them and you love them. Then you react to it. You might hug them, or sit and talk to them, or offer your support, or…” Sharon turned away from Willam and once again, let herself get lost in the sunset. “If they’re a lover, you might kiss them… Hold them close… The way you show your love is different, but the love itself is the same.”

In spite of herself, Willam smiled. “Alright, alright. Where’s your authority, though, Needles? What makes you the love expert? What do you know about love?”

Sharon giggled and rested her head on Willam’s shoulder. “I’ve felt it.”

“You’ve felt it? So you’ve met someone and the first time you saw them, they, uh… set your heart on fire and made you shit lava or something.”

This time, Sharon laughed properly, pulling away from Willam so she could playfully shove her. 

“Minus the shitting lava.” Sharon joked. “But yes. Not straight away, though. I was drawn to them, like I told you, I knew I was going to love them. But they’ll never admit defeat, so I’m pretty sure nothing will come of it.”

Willam was almost certain that Sharon was speaking in riddles, and try as she might, she couldn’t unlock them. Maybe Sharon hadn’t been lying - there was a lot that Willam didn’t seem to know about her. The only thing she found a little scary about that was the way that Sharon nearly had her convinced. She spoke with such confidence and conviction that Willam found herself understanding her best friend’s point of view more and more.

After all, it did make sense that you could know something good would happen. That day seven years ago, walking late into a biology class, Willam had known that the friendship she would strike up with Sharon would be something good, something that kept her going and spurred her on through many of the trials presented by a boarding school filled with girls. Maybe love was a strong word, but Willam had cared for Sharon right when they walked out of that lesson together as friends, not strangers. Willam had cared about Sharon when she watched her fend off bullies and staff alike with her cutting wit and sharp tongue. In that very first conversation, Willam had known something good was going to come out of it.

In the same vein, Willam could’ve sworn she knew something good was going to happen that very night. Sharon had whispered the plan to meet up on their usual spot after hours during lunch, before she had been dragged away by an unrelenting teacher who wanted to make her remove the pins and badges that made her so unique. They met there all the time, so it wasn’t unusual, but as she dwelled on it more, Willam was sure she had felt a little surge of something unknown, telling her that this was positive.

None of it made any sense. The feelings, the conviction, Sharon’s whole thing about true love and destiny. But Willam was seeing sense in all of the madness anyway.

“I just think it has to develop over time.” Willam mused, shuffling closer to Sharon. “But I think I get what you mean, though I still stand by myself. What the hell do you know about love, really?”

Sharon smiled. “Best of both worlds… I knew right away, but mine has developed over time… I definitely didn’t feel like this at the start, but now… Some people just don’t know how to recognise it, I guess. Some people just need a push in the right direction and they’ll see what they weren’t seeing before.”

They fell silent, letting the night progress into a comfortable quietness. Nothing else needed to be said. No amount of talking or laughing could add to the delicate atmosphere created by the sinking sun, and the way it lit up the area around them. Their pieces said, all there was left to do was to sit and bear witness to the approaching darkness, appreciating it together.

When the sun finally began dipping into the trees, and the sky had moved on to a deeper, darker mauve, they began to move. Willam shrugged her blazer back on, grateful for how it had been warmed as she sat on it, and slowly made her way down onto the actual rooftop with Sharon at her heels. 

Once they made it down, and were just about to go down the steps and sneak into their dorms, Sharon suddenly stopped and threw her arms around Willam, pulling her into a tight hug. Taken aback, Willam squeezed her back and relaxed into the embrace, her heart warmed by the sudden onset of affection.

“You okay?” She checked.

“I’m good.” Sharon replied, her voice muffled as her face pressed against Willam’s shoulder. “Thanks for this. Goodnight, Willam.”

“Nighty nightmares, Needles.” Willam winked and grinned as they pulled apart, moving aside to let Sharon descend first before following her. They parted ways once they reached the corridors branching off into the dormitories, saying goodbye once again with a small smile and a squeeze of the hand.

“Love you.”

-

Summer storms had arrived. Willam sat on the roof, staring out at the gathered clouds as though they were as calming as the sunset from weeks ago. They weren’t, really, cloying and dangerous and ready to strike, but Willam’s outlook on almost everything had been changing for a while now.

It was almost like a routine, curling into bed each night and wondering why her mind kept dragging her back to Sharon. Thoughts of her kept Willam awake at night, wondering why she cared so much about the way Sharon laughed, or the flicker of sadness when people made fun of her that was soon replaced by defiance. All she could do was lay there and wonder why the hell she was the only thing that could ever cross her mind. It was new and it was weird.

Truthfully, it hadn’t taken too long for Willam to realize what was going on. She was pretty good at deciphering her own feelings, and it seemed her conversation with Sharon a couple of weeks ago had solidified something she hadn’t even known was there. But it was, strong and surviving within her as the weeks went by.

Willam sighed as it rained on her. Of course, she hadn’t brought an umbrella.

All of the hollow helplessness that had permeated her ever since their candid conversation had awoken a new kind of terror in Willam that she didn’t know what to do with.

The sound of footsteps pulled her out of her trance. She turned, tearing her gaze away from the strange beauty of the storm. Just as Sharon appeared, already drenched from venturing out in the rain, a clap of thunder seemed to appropriately announce her presence.

“Willam!” She called out, making her way across the roof tiles with extra care to ensure she didn’t slip. “Are you okay?”

To anyone else, Willam realized they would assume she was crazy, or suicidal, or maybe both. Reports had been warning about the storm for days now, and it had arrived in all of its terrifying glory in a swirling mixture of black clouds, golden sunshine and torrential rain. Lightning had been flashing periodically since Willam had arrived, soon followed with the rumbling thunder, and she did realize that being on the roof put her in somewhat of a more dangerous position than anywhere else.

Still, it was the only place she felt she could talk to Sharon the way she wanted to.

Sharon started to approach, and Willam swallowed in preparation to answer the question. “I didn’t bring an umbrella…”

As though that wasn’t obvious by the hair plastered to her face, dripping wet. Willam cursed herself internally, but Sharon offered a smile that seemed to make the clouds disappear momentarily.

“I didn’t either. We might get struck by lightning.” She giggled.

Willam laughed with her. “We might get struck anyway.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Neither of them were sitting; Willam having risen immediately when Sharon came over. They just stood opposite one another, battered by the wind and the rain, freezing and soaked and yet still bathed in the fragments of sunlight that streamed through the gaps in the clouds.

They were close. Willam would only have to extend her hand just a little for it to brush against Sharon’s and entwine.

“I… I’ve been thinking a lot!” Willam found herself having to yell over the noise as the storm seemed to pick up. “About- About our conversation!”

Sharon watched her, nodding her head just so in an indication that she had heard. Her arms were wrapped around herself in a poor attempt to hold herself together. She was shivering from head to toe, her black hair stuck to her face, her clothes completely saturated already. Her mouth was open slightly, her lipstick having smudged from the unrelenting rainfall, and Willam could see the gap in her front teeth.

“I don’t know how to say it!” Willam shouted. “I thought about it so much and it kept sticking in my head and I couldn’t get away from you, even in my dreams you were there and I couldn’t work out why! But I know, I’m sure I know!”

A couple of moments passed in which Willam couldn’t breathe, and the storm only grew louder. Finally, Sharon shook her head and shouted something. The wind and thunder immediately tore her voice away, but Willam lip-read it as “I can’t hear you!”

Willam moved even closer to Sharon. They were mere inches apart now, close enough that Willam could’ve counted every single freckle on Sharon’s face, or every single drop of water that ran down it as they continued to be assaulted by the turn in weather. Heartbeat elevated beyond what she had ever thought possible, Willam took one more step and then cupped both sides of Sharon’s face. Her eyes were blown and her chest was heaving.

“It’s you!” She cried out. “It’s you, Sharon, it’s you!”

Sharon shook her head again, this time distressed. Willam didn’t let go, sensing that she was all that was keeping the other girl grounded.

“I don’t understand!”

“It’s you!” Willam repeated, desperate and frenzied. “You’re what I know about love!”

Sharon’s brows were creased furiously in an attempt to keep the rain from her eyes. It did nothing to quell the terror sieging Willam’s chest, her expression likely harmless but appearing as though she were angry or confused.

“What?!”

Willam was panting; her breath came in short, sharp bursts, exacerbated by the storm. “I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU, SHARON! I LOVE –”

It all happened so quick. They were close enough anyway, close enough that it took less than a second for Sharon to release her grip on herself and transfer the iron hold to Willam’s face instead. Her fingers were frozen, all of her muscles tense, and neither of them could breathe under the duress of their closeness. Willam’s hands had somehow found their way onto Sharon’s hips, and although it was impossible for them to get any closer she still pulled them towards her, desperate to feel every inch of them pressed together.

The kiss was electric; its sparks rivalled that of the storm around them, the storm that their kiss made them impervious to. Rain still lashed against them, lightning still crackled and thunder still boomed and the wind still blustered and they felt none of it, nothing except the numbness of the cold and the full-body warmth of their embrace.

They stopped just as a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, striking somewhere far in the distance but the flash bright enough to cause them both to jump. Willam noticed that her chest was heaving and so was Sharon’s, and though her lungs were working fine the struggle to take in oxygen stayed with her.

It was maddening that Sharon had been right.

Maddening that love was something that could start blossoming from the first day, because it had - Willam had kept an eye out for that lonely girl ever since and she hadn’t even known that she was going to grow to love her, but every fibre of her being told her to stop dwelling on it and kiss her again, because she was in love.

In love, in love with Sharon Needles, her best friend. On the roof, in a summer storm, tempting fate to strike them with bolts of electricity not unlike the ones propelling them to kiss with desperate, breathless, reckless abandon.

Sharon seemed to have regained the ability to form sentences, although her shout was hoarse and throaty.

“Kiss me again! Kiss me again so I know it wasn’t just me -”

Growing colder by the minute, Willam sought warmth the only way she knew how to, crashing her lips against Sharon’s for the second time and marvelling at how she had never known just how right it felt to have Sharon’s arms around her waist, and to have her hands cupping Sharon’s jaw. Such small pleasures she’d denied herself for so long, and though the chill settled into bones it didn’t matter when just being this close to Sharon seemed to set her alight.

It was so right. Willam’s brain was empty of thoughts except just one.

You’re what I know about love.


End file.
